Chapter 1
The watch rotation had been set by Hange and then adjusted by Levi and then adjusted again by circumstance, which was how Mikasa and Eren ended up alone on the south ridge from midnight to three.
Neither of them mentioned the adjustment. There was nothing to say about it.
The valley below was silver in the half-moon. Quiet. The Titans — the ones that remained — were far enough away that the Survey Corps sentries could do this: stand on a ridge and look at something beautiful and almost pretend.
"You've been quiet," Eren said.
"I'm always quiet."
"Quieter than that."
She kept her eyes on the valley. He was standing close enough that she could feel the warmth of him through two layers of jacket, through Survey Corps green, through everything she'd learned to wear as armor. This was the problem with Eren: she'd never been able to make herself go fully numb to him. She'd tried. She'd gotten better at not showing it. That was as far as she'd gotten.
"I'm thinking," she said.
"About the ocean?"
"About after."
He went quiet at that, which was answer enough. After was the word they were all careful with. The ocean was a destination, a thing to move toward, and no one wanted to look past it — not because there was nothing past it, but because what was past it was unclear enough to be frightening in a different way than Titans were frightening. Titans were immediate. After was abstract. Abstract things couldn't be killed.
"Armin's got maps," Eren said. "He's been reading everything he can about coastlines. He thinks the water's going to be salt. Like, really salt, more than you'd think."
"I know what the sea is."
"I know you know. I'm just — talking."
She looked at him then. He was looking at the valley, his jaw set, and she recognized the angle of it — the angle he got when he was trying not to say something that wanted to be said. She'd mapped his expressions the way Armin mapped coastlines, carefully, over years, because it was the kind of thing you did with the things that mattered to you.
The scarf was around her neck. She'd worn it every day since she was nine years old, except for the days she couldn't. It smelled like Survey Corps gear now, like leather and oil, but underneath there was something older, something she'd never been able to name precisely. She'd stopped trying to name it.
"I've been thinking about what comes after too," Eren said quietly. "More than I let on."
"I know."
He turned then, surprised — but he shouldn't have been surprised, she'd always known when he was lying about being fine, when he was lying about being certain, when he was performing conviction because conviction was what they needed from him. She'd always known.
"Mikasa."
"Don't," she said. Not harsh. Just — she knew where sentences that started that way went, and she couldn't hold on to whatever they built if he built it and then didn't mean it, and she couldn't tell yet which it would be.
He closed his mouth. Opened it again. The valley was still silver below them, still quiet. Somewhere to the east a night bird called twice and went silent.
"What would you want?" he said finally. "If we get there. If there's an after. What would you want it to look like?"
The question landed differently than she expected.
She thought about it honestly, which she rarely let herself do. She thought about walls and the absence of walls and what it felt like to move through open space with a destination that wasn't just survive this, and then survive the next thing. She thought about Armin and the sea and Eren's hands in the firelight three nights ago when he'd been doing something with his jacket buckle and she'd had to deliberately look away.
"Somewhere quiet," she said. "Not forever. Just — a stretch of it. After."
"Okay."
"You?"
He was quiet for a long time. Long enough that she thought he wasn't going to answer, that the question had turned into something he couldn't quite handle. Then:
"I don't know how to want things that aren't in motion," he said. "Everything I want — it's always the next thing. The next wall. The next horizon." He exhaled. "I think that might be a problem."
"It's always been a problem."
"You could have said something earlier."
"I did say something earlier. Continuously. For ten years."
He laughed, low and real, and for a moment he was exactly the person she'd followed here — not the symbol, not the weapon, just Eren, who was infuriating and reckless and the constant axis around which her life had arranged itself without her permission.
His shoulder touched hers. Neither of them moved away.
They stood like that until the watch rotation ended, the valley silver below them, the sea somewhere beyond everything they could currently see.